Thread by @awelder

If they wanted fresh thoughts they would've asked someone else. What follows is salted and distilled with care over many years, and you need to be able to answer some questions in any such address 1/30

https://twitter.com/murpharoo/status/1027011927011090432

Why does experience matter in political journalism? It matters in professions like law or medicine. After six months in a supermarket there's nothing more to learn. What advantage does the experience political journo have over the inexperienced?

What, exactly, is the essence of that advantage? More importantly, what's in it for us?

All of the big debates of 2018 - electricity, China, NDIS, housing prices - were big issues under Gillard, or Howard. And yet ...

... none of the journalism from that era survives. None of it informs today's debates

Press gallery journalism fails as a First Draft of History. It fails in its own time - our time - as News You Can Use

Look back upon all those dead Newspolls, across that vast desert of "PM under fire" (we've had 29 of the buggers, every one of them has been "under fire"). Everyone who strained so hard to excrete that at us needn't have bothered

As I said in the blog, it's so bad that it has killed Fairfax, and once an old man in New York goes it will kill News too

andrewelder.blogspot.com/2018/08/how-pr…

Go back and read Peter Hartcher and Lenore Taylor rubbishing the lasting significance of Gillard's misogyny speech. Show it to someone whose youth is being shaped by #MeToo

Experienced gallery journos have seen PMs come and go. Laurie Oakes knew almost half of them, two since they were undergrads. He should've known what it takes to do that job, and so should anyone who'd been there more than a week

You(se) should have known that Tony Abbott was never, ever up to it

(so should the Liberal Party, but there'll be none of your whataboutery, thank you very much)

A classic trope over 117 years of Australian press gallery journalism is the yokel MP who somehow scales the commanding heights of conservative governments. Joyce is the latest example, and he fooled you all

Where is your self-examination? What made you think that sow's ear was a silk purse in the rough? Why were hard-bitten professionals from the nation's capital taken in by a Walcha rodeo clown?

I follow Australian politics very closely, but one of its central questions - whether Shorten is up to being the PM we need right now - isn't clear to me. Let's face it: this isn't clear to any of you so-called experienced gallery journos, either

Australia is badly governed because we are badly informed. Your job is to inform us about how we are governed, and what our options are

Parliament House is one of the great vectors of information in our country. Fancy having the power to draw in all that info, from everywhere! And yet, a suburban factional ALP power play has you all in a tizz. The same tizz, all of you

We live in an information age, not a journalism age, not even a social media age. Information professionals in an information age should both be highly respected and making out like bandits. That isn't happening though, is it

It's one thing to be unable to organise a piss-up in a brewery, but quite another to be dying of thirst in such an environment. We've seen what bad press gallery journalism did to proper journos here in the provinces, and nobody wants our democracy to go down like that

You're right about no more theatre reviews, let's see how long you can abstain. That theatre is put on to bamboozle you. Any self-respecting professional would abhor being gulled, let alone lapping it up every day like the gallery does

Proper theatre requires the audience to suspend disbelief. I'm happy to do that for Shakespeare or Nakkiah Lui, but I'll be damned if I will do that for Cormann or Albo

Australians aren't grateful to politicians and they/we aren't grateful to journalists either. More to the point, they/we don't have to be. Look at the sheer poverty of spirit and intellect in political coverage and realise you had no right to expect otherwise

Almost no accountability journalism comes from the gallery, and yes I can prove it

The press gallery is like Question Time. Nothing changes as a result, but it's more trouble than it's worth right now to get rid of either. Anyone who thinks this situation can last, let alone will or should, is a fool

Tell your audience to do better than you have, than Michael Gordon or Kelly or Oakes or Alan Reid. Admit that it mightn't be that hard. When you insist that the press gallery is across the challenges of our small-a age, you lie ...

... to yourself, you lie to us. Don't lie to your audience tomorrow night

This Day Tonight were the Chaser Boys of their time. Fuck nostalgia, don't go there. Nothing in that for you, either

Finally, a public speaking tip: eat an apple before your speech. A good crisp apple will unclench your jaw and is better for you than cigs or a belt from the old hip flask.

Break a damn leg, extra points for taking out some Simon Benson wannabe

30/30ish